The STEP Framework - Maximizing Performance

I’ve developed a framework over the years designed to maximize performance in individuals on my teams consisting of 4 simple ingredients: Self, Transparency, Equipping, and Purpose. I must admit that it’s informed by StrengthsFinder, Myers Briggs, and other systems, but rather than basing everything on taking an inventory of the individual, I simply recognize that each member of a team is unique and focus on how to better understand one another to improve performance.

S = Self Among the 4 components of this framework, this is perhaps the simplest. Ask your team member why she gets up every morning and shows up for her job. Challenge her to think in basic terms, more sophisticated reasons for why she works will come up later in this process. What you’re looking for here is something like, “Well, I do have to pay the rent every month.” or “I’d like to be a musician, but it doesn’t pay enough for me to live off of.” It’s important to land on something basic and real here. The honesty of talking about needing a paycheck and perhaps this not being her dream job sets the tone for this being a real, brass tacks process that isn’t weighed-down by the frilliness of a pseudo-personality quiz for the workplace. Assure her—and even encourage her—that this is a good and proper motivation for showing up to work everyday, in fact it may be the most consistent thing that can be relied on to get her through challenging times.

T = Transparency I’ve found this to be the most powerful element of the framework. You must clearly state to your team member that you want to know what he’s doing and why and you commit to doing the same, telling him what you are doing and why you are doing it. There have been studies in HBR and other well-researched journals on “fair process” in the workplace. People have even provided feedback that they agree with, or are satisfied with, outcomes that negatively affect them so long as they were kept informed of decisions being made and why they were made.

Transparency has two very important effects on a team:

1. Empowerment – In a much more real sense than providing an ad hoc committee to hear the voice of the employee or having some kind of online feedback system, transparency sets the expectation that you and your team member will communicate openly and regularly.
2. Extinguishes Micromanagement – Transparency preempts the need or tendency to micromanage. Part of letting one another know what is going on and why it’s happening is also telling one another if the right information is being shared and if it’s being shared frequently enough (or too frequently). Once the quality and tempo of exchanging information is established and refined, there will be no need to micromanage.

E = Equipping Equipping is another simple component of the process. Ask questions like these and ask them regularly: “Do you need another software tool?” “Do you want to get a book or two on this subject?” “Do you think training would help you?” Now that we’ve established transparency, be sure to let them know what’s affordable in terms of budget and time, but chances are that a $30 book or a $500 one day training session are reasonable.

The benefits to equipping your team members are multi-faceted:

1. They will feel cared for by this investment in them.
2. Making the offer will avoid situations where they might not have spoken-up on their own, even if they really did need something.
3. Studies have shown that they will be more attentive to the material they are receiving as a result of this dialogue compared to material being pushed to them via a company-wide initiative for example.
4. Of course, most importantly, they are getting the tools they need to perform better in their jobs.

P = Purpose This is the most philosophical element to the framework. Having identified what gets them “out of the bed in the morning,” purpose is designed to discover what impact your team members want to make in the world. If one of them says that she wants to build cool, new things like Steve Jobs or she wants to make sure people’s daily lives are somehow made better through her work, you can start to get a sense of what will motivate her in the long-term – in this case, it sounds like she places high value on innovation. Another team member may say that he wants to know that society is benefiting from his work or that he’d like the chance to see if the company’s products can help local charities – in this case, it’s clear that social impact is important to him. No matter the nature of your company, it shouldn’t be too difficult to help your team members see how their work contributes to these goals. I’m not suggesting that you fabricate storylines to fit into some narrative, but if you take a moment to think of how your shipping logistics company can help a charity—or better yet, is already helping charities—or how your company that makes software for manufacturers can build something that will really change the way people do business (think of the impact that Salesforce has made in the rather mundane world of CRM), all kinds of good things can develop out of helping your team members see the connections between their work and the bigger goals they have for their vocations.

Here are some of the benefits to helping your team members identify their purpose:

1. They will enjoy a deeper sense of meaning in their work.
2. You can shape each member’s role around the purpose that was shared with you and manage each individual in a more effective way.
3. They may develop aspirational goals for your team that lead to entering new markets or developing new products.

These 4 simple elements to motivating team members have proven to be successful time and time again for me, delivering outstanding results even in the most challenging of circumstances. I believe that using this framework to have meaningful discussions with your team members will significantly improve each individual’s performance. Try having a 30 minute conversation with a team member this week focusing on Self, Transparency, Equipping, and Purpose and share the response with us here on LinkedIn.